The Refugees eBook

The little group of survivors waited in breathless
anxiety while the canoe sped swiftly up the river,
with a line of foam on either side of her, and a long
forked swirl in the waters behind. They could
see that she appeared to be very crowded, but they
remembered that the wounded of the other boat were
aboard her. On she shot and on, until as she
came abreast of the fort she swung round, and the
rowers raised their paddles and burst into a shrill
yell of derision. The stern of the canoe was
turned towards them now, and they saw that two women
were seated in it. Even at that distance there
was no mistaking the sweet pale face or the dark queenly
one beside it. The one was Onega and the other
was Adele.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

THE TWO SWIMMERS.

Charles de la Noue, Seigneur de Sainte Marie, was
a hard and self-contained man, but a groan and a bitter
curse burst from him when he saw his Indian wife in
the hands of her kinsmen, from whom she could hope
for little mercy. Yet even now his old-fashioned
courtesy to his guest had made him turn to De Catinat
with some words of sympathy, when there was a clatter
of wood, something darkened the light of the window,
and the young soldier was gone. Without a word
he had lowered the ladder and was clambering down
it with frantic haste. Then as his feet touched
the ground he signalled to his comrades to draw it
up again, and dashing into the river he swam towards
the canoe. Without arms and without a plan he
had but the one thought that his place was by the side
of his wife in this, the hour of her danger.
Fate should bring him what it brought her, and he
swore to himself, as he clove a way with his strong
arms, that whether it were life or death they should
still share it together.

But there was another whose view of duty led him from
safety into the face of danger. All night the
Franciscan had watched De Catinat as a miser watches
his treasure, filled with the thought that this heretic
was the one little seed which might spread and spread
until it choked the chosen vineyard of the Church.
Now when he saw him rush so suddenly down the ladder,
every fear was banished from his mind save the overpowering
one that he was about to lose his precious charge.
He, too, clambered down at the very heels of his prisoner,
and rushed into the stream not ten paces behind him.

And so the watchers at the window saw the strangest
of sights. There, in mid-stream, lay the canoe,
with a ring of dark warriors clustering in the stern,
and the two women crouching in the midst of them.
Swimming madly towards them was De Catinat, rising
to the shoulders with the strength of every stroke,
and behind him again was the tonsured head of the
friar, with his brown capote and long trailing gown
floating upon the surface of the water behind him.
But in his zeal he had thought too little of his
own powers. He was a good swimmer, but he was